Re: Recent Macrohistories, wool and cotton in the

[I'm forwarding this response to H-World. To Editor: you can take out these
brackets sentence if you want. This is in response to something you
forwarded several weeks ago. Thanks. To WSN: I'll foward the other message
that he is quoting.]


At 09:42 AM 5/29/01 -0400, you wrote:
>[re-sending due to wrong address]
>Greetings,
>
>Re: your recent posting at H-WORLD, I read with interest and attention 
>your message, which has some quite insightful theses to the eyes of this 
>educated layman(!).
>
>I have one minor question: it seemed to me that the mention to "British 
>wool" in the paragraph below quoted should have been to "British cotton" 
>instead; am I right, or did I misundertand some key point?
>
>Regards,
>
>--hernan astudillo
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From:  whitney howarth [SMTP:whowarth@lynx.dac.neu.edu]
>Sent:  Tuesday, 08 May, 2001 17:00
>To:    H-WORLD@H-NET.MSU.EDU
>Subject:       Recent Macrohistories
>
>Date: May 8, 2001
>From: Mark Whitaker
>        University of Wisconsin-Madison
>        mrkdwhit@WALLET.COM
>
>[...]
>Three: I take the work as a whole as a caveat against world systems narratives
>of generalized peripheries, semiperipheries, and cores (while accepting the
>positionalities of them) in my discussion of the global trade mechanics of how
>British wool, presumably an "exporting periphery destined to remain so"
>actually could become such a core area hundreds of years later. I'm interested
>[...]



Greetings,

        Thanks for the close reading, though, yes, I did mean British wool in 
this
case. (We are talking of the period 1250-1700s in what follows, well before
cotton made it to that temperate climate. In English history, wool expanded
worldwide first, and the trade backwash the expansion of the English wool
trade worldwide (particularly to the tropics)  brought cotton back to
England to roost as an unintended consequence with long term results to
British polticial economy.)

        British *wool* was particularly instrumental in state
formation/consolidation of the monarchy, just as British *cotton* (actually
United States bulk cotton) was later instrumental in the proletarianization
of Manchester, while Leeds's different experience with economies of scale
around wool gave it a less proletarianized social framework of textile
manufacture. And British woolens were competitive with Manchester
throughout the 1800s as well, so this issue is matched. (In the paper I
match 11 such 'alternative arguments'  for these cities (Manchester, Leeds,
Bradford), thus (1) demoting them as important because these cities SHARED
that factor (and thus it would be without responsibility for specifically
explaining one over the other) or (2) showing how these other factors which
are typically discussed as 'human-only' factors (like capital formation,
like transportation, etc.) are qualified themselves by the specifics of raw
materials. I posted it to the world history list because I saw it as having
generalized adjuctable factors to keep in mind analyzing economic history
worldwide (and several cases in the later part of the work do jump out of
the British context to make some points about raw material physical science
variability and human social variability--without falling for the trap of
explaining this as somehow outside of the political arrangements of the
area or period. It is endemically part of the rationales for the politics
of the period however. That state political economy aspect part of the
paper was lightly touched upon, because most of it was set up to prove to
my satisfaction (300 pages ;-)  ) the environmental/human relationship of
consumption and urbanization social organization was worth noticing as a
generalized phenomenon.

        Back to your issue: To help make the early 1800s 'happen' around cotton
required a long series of **political and legal changes** (instead of
'economic') changes: the legal regimes that had facilitated wool
consumption and expansion in the first place were being demoted and
challenged later by expanding cotton interests, which included the 'cotton
dumping' policies by so called 'royal companies' particularly the East
India Company. There was quite a bit of bandying about of how 'traitorous'
this was for royal companies--which were set up to facilitate English
expansion of trade instead of demote it at home--to undermine British wool
manufactures in this way, by giving consumers in Britain a choice in the
matter. Lots of 'pamphlet wars' between wool and cotton interests in this
period I have seen on microfiche, each stating their side on how the laws
should be and who had the biggest heart, who was doing this selflessly (as
you will endlessly hear from Monsanto and company with GMOs in the present
day), and who was the biggest traitor. These battles touch on the
"political economy" side of all these harsh sumptuary laws of England in
the 1600s. Actually, one of the most revealing bits of information I found
(that belies all these demand-side frameworks of 'consumer choice' you hear
in neoliberalist economic thought) was that it was even ILLEGAL to be
buried in anything else than wool for many years (1500s-1600s) in England.
Talk about a captive consumer and supply side telling you what to buy
according to their interests alone. ;-) 
        There are many other examples: I cite the instances of these 'pro-wool'
/anti-cotton' laws in the text, as well as the history of how the wool
regime was undermined in various ways. 
        Anyway, by the mid-1300s, up to 2/3 of Crown state 'income' taxation was
attributable to taxation frameworks on wool. (This wool raw material regime
is the origin of the "Woolsack" in the British Parliament--which was
actually set up to remind those who met there of the king's interest in
keeping wool flowing in England and to avoid hampering the trade--instead
of creating a cute 'social' custom. (Perhaps we can see the barrel of oil
seated prominently in a corner of Bush's Oval Office presently?) 
        Simultaneous to this, and related to your quote (of what I wrote) about
world systems theory being useful in terms of positional analysis though
unappreciative of the material specificity of these positions), case in
point: England was embarking from a peripheral supply context which at
least according to world systems theory taken in the abstract, should have
'destined' it to peripheral status. However, that was my point--that world
system theory should be related to THE RAW MATERAL SPECIFICS of the number
of suppliers verses the number of buyers in core/periphery relationships.
This as well relates to the variegation of the environmental/geographic
world as well. It's a way to 'update' this Marxist functionalism of the
1970s (Wallerstein). This is less an argument against the usefulness of
static positionalties if you want to consider the world in that context
(which seem to have a great deal of empirical data to prove it: see the
book _Network Analysis_). However, it is more interesting to me to discuss
the rationales for **positional change**, as much as the durability and
creation of these positions.
        In the British case, it had 'unsubstitutable wool,' meaning the British
grades of wool were known to be of fine quality--making MANUFACTURERS in
the Low Countries as well as elsewhere dependent upon them for wool. In
other words, existing manufacturers were unable to play divide and conquer
with their (plurality of) suppliers, as typically occurs worldwide in many
materials and minerals. In the English case, it was a monopoly and the
power relations were different. (World systems theory may be useful in the
abstract when these orientations arrange themselves in a monopsony
framework (one buyer, many sellers), however, the world is full of
monopsonies and monopolies as well as trade relationships inbetween. This
means we should have a spectrum here instead of tacitly assuming that the
world is monopsony-oriented by default, as world systems theory does.
Historically, this monopoly on the supply side, meant, of course, a higher
price for their wool in England. Plus, making English textiles from English
wool set them demoting textiles manufactures everywhere else. India was
dropped like a stone in the late 1700s as a textiles powerhouse--only to be
integrated in the British Empire later as something different, the
peripheral extraction state, run on British capital. (Resat Kasaba has an
edited 'world systems' book, advisory editor Wallerstein, which has a
chapter about this. Plus, read any Indian economic history about this as well.)

        Besides the world systems critique/update, one of the arguments is that
there is nothing 'automatic' about cotton 'economic take-off' in the 1800s,
and that it is always raw material specific. However, there is something
interesting about cotton MATERIALLY in general worldwide as compared to
other textile choices. Plus, I believe Albert Hirschman discusses this:
about the specifics of extraction linkages and how they influence
'industrial development' being important to know about: because each
extraction item has different social potentialities. I'll look up the
citation if you wanted it. 
        Relating this to the British case,      textiles worldwide particularly 
have a
great deal of 'cross over qualities', it being historically (worldwide
until 200 years ago) part of the storehouse of common knowledge in an
family economy to make their own textiles, own their own looms, etc. The
knowledge base is (was) there and it was domestic. Therefore, it was easier
in terms of costs to slowly shift from a more exclusive orientation of wool
exporters, into becoming the wool powerhouse that England was by the
1600s--through urban textiles gilds in London (which were hated by the
Crown), to the later expansion throughout the 'countryside' of what has
been called 'proto-industrialized' areas. However, instead of seeing these
as 'rural areas,' I suggested throughout that this can be seen as nascent
urbanization instead--being built up peripheral to already stable levels of
urban consumption and trade of textiles. Similar to the present and the
'labor and environmental race to the bottom,' many of these peripheral
textiles areas were organized by merchants attempting to get around gild
labor laws and payments, by moving to the countryside and connecting with
impoverished low-agricultural output areas--outside the state legal
monitoring framework. To facilitate this demotion of gilded labor as well
as expanding the tax base for the monarchy, the king even had 'immigration
drives' to lure the Dutch over into England. They were settled
intentionally throughout England instead of allowing to choose their
destination to keep them from organizing as "Dutch nationals" in England,
particularly in London. This seeding of Dutch technology and skill was done
in several waves of sponsored immigration, and "English" wares (with
English wool) became more competitive with each immigration. There were
still religious services offered in the Dutch language in the early 1900s,
from data I have seen in a Lancashire town (Midlands) known for worsted
'stuffs.' Thus, the powerhouse context of 'industrialization' in this case
had a great deal to do with textiles in general, and with cotton
specifically (as the wool example throughout is described as very different
organizationally despite being a powerhouse in itself in terms of export.
The issue was how cotton 'imploded' into Manchester, and how Leeds expanded
in a more humane way, because of the durability of the lucrative quality of
maintaining small manufacturing techniques. The lucrative quality of these
small techniques were entirely related to the different technological
amenability of wool in manufacturing, which is traceable back to supply
side and 'wool raising' variability of wool issues as well. Cotton, with
only four of the 26 species of cotton being used worldwide presently for
what we wear--and most of this coming from only 2 species--certainly should
keep people in mind that instead of looking at issues like 'capital' people
should see power relations in the world as associated with securely
uncompetitive consumptive items.
 
enough, phew, download it and read a summary for  yourself:

http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/intersci-l/files/RMADOL/RMADOLsummary.html

or

whole text downloadable from this page (zipped PDF file 2.27MB)

http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/intersci-l/index2.htm


Regards,


Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison